NORTHAMPTON — Smith College’s Davis Ballroom temporarily turned into the location of a cooking competition on Tuesday, with Smith chefs competing for a cash prize before a panel of judges, including the mayor of Northampton.

The event, known as the Culinary Innovators Challenge, kicks off the school’s Draper Competition week, where female entrepreneurs from across the country head to the historically women’s college to pitch their ideas. In the same vein, the Culinary Innovators Challenge features three Smith chefs competing using local ingredients and a key ingredient required in all dishes.

“It’s an opportunity for our staff to demonstrate their own creativity,” said Andy Cox, the executive director of auxiliary services at Smith, who oversees dining services on campus. “This is our second competition, with the first one held in 2019 and then it got interrupted due to the pandemic.”

The three chefs who competed in the event were Christine Depault, a former member of the UMass culinary team with over 20 years of experience; Peter Masiero, a Smith College chef at their Cushing and Emerson houses; and Dave DeJordy, who once catered for then-vice president Joe Biden.

The key ingredient that each chef had to use in their dish was mushrooms. DeJordy prepared a galbi, a type of Korean-style barbecue ribs, using a lion’s mane mushroom in place of meat. Depault also took a vegetarian route, using mushrooms in place of meat to create a ragout, a type of French stew, served with chickpea gnocchi. Masiero went for mushroom ravioli, served with kale, ricotta and pumpkin seed.

Two prizes were handed out at the competition, a $500 prize for the dish named as guest favorite, and a $1,000 prize awarded by a panel of four judges. The judges consisted of Nelson Lacey, the head of the culinary department at Smith Vocational; Drew Brow, the owner of Highbrow Kitchen in Northampton; Wayne Hooker, owner of Cajun on the Go restaurant in Springfield; and Northampton Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra.

“It’s certainly the greatest kind of community assignment I can get,” said Sciarra, herself an alumna of Smith, on serving as a judge of the competition.

Ultimately, the guests’ and the judges’ favorite ended up being the same. Depault’s dish took both awards, and she received $1,500 total from the contest, as well as on offer to help Brow with catering during the summer.

“It feels good to win as a woman, for women’s empowerment,” Depault said. “This money will help me with some of the bills during the summer layoff period.”

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.

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